Tuesday, November 12, 2013

I love going to art museums. I love dragging my family to art museums. Even if they're not as excited as I am at first, I know they'll have a change of heart once they see the art. So when I heard about the "Lifelike" exhibit at the Blanton Museum, I knew we had to go for one single reason, which I'll tell you about in a bit. When we decided to go, it happened to be the last day of the exhibit. It also just happened to be museum day, which meant we got in free [bonus!], and also meant that we had to fight the scores of people who knew it was museum day and were taking advantage of the free admission [bummer]. But we braved the crowds, and saw some amazing art from eerily lifelike busts, to miniature working elevators [a Finn favorite], to bronze sculptures of cardboard and trash which looked so real, I thought someone had forgotten to clean up after themselves. We also saw an excellent exhibit of Cubist art [another bonus!]

But the piece de resistance, the reason I dragged three reluctant gallery goers and a baby downtown on their Sunday afternoon, fought crowds, and stood in lines was for this single piece:

This is Chuck Close's first self portrait. It's 9 feet tall by 7 feet wide. If you don't know about Chuck Close, you should read about him. He's an amazing artist with an amazing story, and his art is, well amazing. Seeing this portrait in person was inspiring, to say the least.

Even when we sat in our car at the top of the parking garage for an hour with hungry kids and a tired baby, waiting to get out, I kept thinking, "My kids will thank me someday."